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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862673">Lay Me Down (Overflow)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack'>lonerofthepack</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What the Water Gave Me 'verse [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Carrying, Dissociation, Enemy to Caretaker, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Support, Torture, Whumptober 2020, i've got you, selkie!Graves, tldr summary in beginning notes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:13:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>433</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For the 2020 whumptober prompt, I've Got You: Support | Carrying | Enemy to Caretaker</p><p>He didn't move. Didn't blink. Barely breathed, but did it steadily, rapid little puffs too calm for panic. </p><p>He laid still and thought of nothing.</p><p>A short prelude, set after Holding On and before What the Water Gave Me (I Took and Gladly) and Stones (Pockets Full), to explain Percival's verbal trigger.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What the Water Gave Me 'verse [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lay Me Down (Overflow)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I’ve Got You: Support | Carrying | Enemy to Caretaker</p><p>Why, yes, I am leaning in on these titles. Florence shouldn't write such fantastically angsty selkie-adjacent music if she doesn't want me to use her songs as angsty fanfiction titles. </p><p>This is a prequel to explain Stones, where Percival is triggered by the phrase "I've got you".</p><p>Tldr for folks worried below:<br/>Percival dissociates during an implied rape--could also be interpreted as some other sort of torment at close quarters. He observes evidence of past torture (discussed in the body of the main fic). Grindelwald strikes him (again) to ascertain his lack of responsiveness, and proceeds to clean him up (blood is mentioned as a better option), then leaves him alone. During this time, Grindelwald talks to him; it's implied that he says 'I've got you' among other things.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>"Hmm, I do believe we've found the limits of your tolerance for that." </p><p>He didn't move. Didn't blink. Barely breathed, but did it steadily, rapid little puffs too calm for panic. He felt Grindelwald pull away, could half imagine watching him do it from some strange disembodied vantage, and still didn't move.</p><p>The crack of a switch snapping against his hip might have made him jump or yowl with the pain, even just an hour ago.</p><p>He laid still and thought of nothing.</p><p>"Up," he was commanded. He didn't understand, and didn't care to. </p><p>He was hefted off the floor. Magic helped, licking against his skin, petulance in the magic sliding into amusement.</p><p>He lolled against the grip, oddly aware that he could feel the grip, the magic, could see from eyes still fluttered open--oddly, because he was reasonably certain he was watching Grindelwald haul him around from one of the darker corners of the room that had become his world. Could see bruises he knew from feeling alone -- the cigarette burn that he'd yelped at, but couldn't manage to twist enough to see with his ribs so badly off--he'd had to clean it blind, and could see now he'd done a poor job of it.</p><p>If it had been an hour ago, a geological age in the past when his body was his and not an object to observe — if it had been then, and not now, that amusement in the magic would have frightened him. The disembodiment would have, too.</p><p>Nothing frightened him, now. But he stopped trying to see anything at all.</p><p>It wasn’t sleep--not even after Grindelwald dumped him onto the pad of the cot he was sometimes permitted to pass out on, he didn’t sleep. </p><p>He didn't twitch, when a cool wet cloth slid over bruised skin, swiping away stickiness that was blood at best. He might have— it amused Grindlewald sometimes, to mimic care like he might make Percival forget to hate him wholeheartedly, and there was little more that Percival hated than false complexity in so textbook a villain. Goading him back to delivering agony was stupid, admittedly stupid, but it was easy to crack that poorly rendered veneer.</p><p>He didn't, now. Drifted on nothingness as a rough flannel scraped away the fluids Grindelwald had smeared on his skin, and eased cruel pale fingers through his tangled hair, spoke words that were dirtied in their falsity, slick and sweet as poison. If he’d been listening, perhaps they might have hurt him.</p><p>He'd surface eventually, but for now it was easier not to exist.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks very much!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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